MOD PLOT ↠ BLAZING LIKE STAR-SHINE

[faderifting]

WHO: All characters signed up to participate in the Battle of Ghislain
WHAT: The Inquisition faces off against the armies of Corypheus
WHEN: Covers most of the day on 11.28 (forward-dated)
WHERE: The Fields of Ghislain, Orlais
NOTES: This is Post #1, covering the battle itself and the retreat. It contains top-levels for each of the teams and an open prompt for the retreat. The OOC post with more information/explanation is HERE. If you're not sure which team your character is on, there's a LIST. POST #2 covers the aftermath of the battle.

Scouts accurately report the enemy's movements: after a slight slow-down believed to indicate that word reached the of the Allies' sudden appearance in their path, they have elected to remain on-course, and arrive almost precisely when and where they were expected. By sunset the night before they are making camp just over the rise to the northeast, easily visible from the hill, and as night falls their fires can be seen winking along the horizon, a close-packed glow.

The mood in the camp is tense, openly jittery rather than the tightly-wound nerves of the past month, but with a sense almost of relief that after so much preparation and so many weeks of anticipation, the day has finally arrived. Some corners of the camp, particularly the greener recruits and the Antivan veterans, are raucous around their campfires, singing and drinking, playful brawls breaking out, but commanders are strict about the wine rations, and even those who choose to take the edge of this way make an early night of it. A scattered handful of men attempt to quietly slip away during the night, mostly Orlesian conscripts, but a few Inquisition agents as well. Some succeed, but others are caught and imprisoned--the Inquisition's few held to be returned to Skyhold where it can be determined if they are traitors or merely cowards, the Orlesians only as long as it takes to find a tree and an audience to watch them hang and spread the cautionary tale.

It is expected that the enemy, hoping to make up for its surprise at finding the Allies prepared for their arrival, will attempt to catch them off-guard by attacking before dawn instead of waiting, as is traditional, for first light. They are all roused from their beds to form up in the dim grey as quietly as possible, moving into formation in the wet grass, a heavy morning fog lingering on the field ahead. It's cool and raw, the air still. But the ground moves: the shudder and rumble of hooves striking earth, felt before it is heard. The Orlesians raise their pikes, the front line braces, and it begins.

---

TEAMS 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • RETREAT
Team members can break off into smaller groups within their top-level prompts—it doesn’t need to be one 13-character thread—and the retreat is an open free-for-all.

Comments

Darras Rivain || ota

[staysail]

i.
They're all about the business of freeing prisoners when the alarm bell starts. The clang peals out clear over the camp, kindling instant life. Shouts in tents, from around campfires; the clatter of weapons, armor, and the solid thud of boots on the earth.

There's little to be done. Darras gives one last strike to the chain that he was working on, abandoning all pretense of silence. It's enough to split the link and he grabs hold of the chevalier's arm, rough and without ceremony, wrenching the man to his feet and half-dragging, half-shoving him toward a retreat. "Move, now, move--"

The chevalier heeds his advice, white in the lips. His pace is a hobble. There's something wrong with his leg, and Darras makes an irritated huff as he overtakes the man, grabbing again for his arm. "Come on--"

There's a hiss, and a wet thump of an arrow burying itself in flesh. The chevalier goes down, clutching his leg and screaming, hoarsely. There's an arrow sticking out of his calf. His screaming is drawing attention and, brutally, without ceremony, Darras cuffs him in the back of his head with the hilt of his falchion.

Unconsciousness overtakes the man. He crumples forward, face-first into the mud. Darras grimaces as he sheathes his falchion again. There's a beat, a little too long. Then he looks up to find a fellow member of the Inquisition. With a quick and rueful little smile, he shrugs.

"'Least he's shut up. C'mon, help me with him--"

And please ignore the part where he was seriously considering leaving the weak bastard behind.

ii.
The air's gone hazy with smoke now, though none of it is thick enough to dampen the din and chaos of their battle and hasty sabotage.

The ragged line of enemy forces begins to take a greater shape, filling in the gaps left in the retreat. There's a thicket of brush that's not yet caught flame. Someone had roughly hacked an opening into it, creating a sort of twiggy tunnel. It stands there now, a bizarre feat of architecture in the burning camp.

Darras grabs the next person to run by him--two, if he can manage it--anyone with the Inquisition, regardless of the shape they're in. "There," he says, pointing out the tunnel. "Bottleneck 'em. I'll lead them through, ambush on the other side--it's just two, it'll be chaos enough--"

And he turns to run off, yelling for attention. It's not long before he's picked up a tail: two spearmen, their rank clear if you know what to look for. Only one of them is carrying a spear. The other is armed with a brutal mace. Darras leads them through the thicket tunnel, as promised--and on the other end, there better be some bloody backup, or he's risked his neck for nothing.

Later in the battle sees Darras having divested himself of prisoners and cooperators. He's back to sew chaos now, dipping torch to canvas on a supply wagon's heavy tauplin cover. It catches surprisingly quick, with a bloom of flame. Satisfied, Darras lobs that torch in a random direction, and hands off the other he's carrying to whoever's beside him.

"Next one. It's supplies, they'll be hurting for it--"

The thud of hooves makes him freeze. A mounted Ander comes tearing into the scene, wheeling his horse about. The sharp tug on the reigns causes the horse to scream protest as it rears back. Darras flattens himself against the wagon. The Ander is hacking at someone, a dark shape. Darras does not move forward to assist. Behind him, the wagon top is burning like a brand. He drops to a crouch anyways, slips backwards beneath it, out of sight and out of range of the horse's thrashing hooves. Whoever that Ander is up against is on their fucking own for a moment. At least until he can work out how to eliminate that horse.

ii part b: closed to Yseult.
There's a bruise forming on his chest, a fucking bruise from a fucking horse. It makes it hard to breathe deeply, which spells real trouble when there's no end in site to this engagement. If there were a way to set fire to the ground itself, and cut and run--burn it, and be done with it--he would. Instead Darras digs down deep and cuts with his falchion again, a broad blow to the face that spins his foe around, spurts blood.

There's another shadow behind the Ander soldier, hazy in the smoke. Darras grabs for them, drags them in by the upper arm so he can get a strike off. Yseult's eyes cut through the smog. He'd know her anywhere. Her face is thick with grime and blood, like she's smeared it on as a paste. Her sleeve is damp under his hand. He lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, and one more second passes.

iii.
[or WILDCARD me thanks]

ii.b (or not)

[hassaran]

She has not, in fact, intentionally smeared grime on her face, so much as been scuffling in the dirt, knees locked around the throat of an Ander twice her size but not quite as stubborn, and missing intensely the use of her right arm, the upper half of which is strapped to her side after a rock cracked the bone just at the shoulder. It's the same one Darras grabs, unknowingly, and she lets out a hiss of pain. She's recognized him first, of course, and her fist tightens in his shirt sleeve but that's all. "Let go, I'm fine."

Whether he does or not, in the next breath her grip's twisted, used to shove him back away from her as roughly as she can, and a boot hooked around his ankle to make sure he topples over, too. He'll see why in a second, the swipe of a spear thrust through the space his chest just filled as a rider on a dracolisk thunders past, emerged from nowhere out of the smoke. She's got her short sword raised, but they don't wheel 'round for another pass, so she steps back to give Darras room to get up again.

"We need to go."

[staysail]

With the breath just coming back to him, Darras hauls himself up from the ground, sodden now with another layer of mud. Better than being run through with a spear, however much the impact from the trip now smarts. The drasolisk's frantic pace carries it away, nightmarish, back through the smoke.

He grabs his falchion from where he's just dropped it, and grabs for her hand.

"Come on."

His palm is slick with blood and mud. Or maybe it's hers. More likely, it's both, a paste that seals their hands together. From ahead of them, a dracolisk's peculiar dry cry splits the air. Footsteps thud; something flashes. Fire, natural or magical, it's impossible to say.

There's clear wisdom in what Yseult has suggested. He wasn't looking for her before, but now that he's found her--what is the point in staying here, among the dead and the dying and the enemy. They'll move careful now, weaving between corpses and the unconscious.

In an undertone, then, just for her: "Did I tell you that I bloody hate fighting on the mainland."